Work Starts on a new £1 million home for Anglesey Sea Salt

Work has started on a £1m new home for iconic food producer Halen Môn/Anglesey Sea Salt.

Award-winning builders Anwyl Construction will complete the state of the art new production plant and visitor centre before the end of the year, ready for production to start in January 2015.

The new salt cote will create at least five new jobs, taking the workforce from 17 to 22, and aims to attract 20,000 visitors a year.

The current salt cote will continue to make the world famous sea salt as construction takes place. The new 1,000 square metre building will be a steel-framed construction of composite structural insulated panels clad with specially selected Welsh larch. It will replace the prefabricated former doctor’s surgery and food grade portable cabins which have done duty as office and production facilities for the last seven years and from where salt has been shipped to Japan, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea as well as the USA and Europe.

Anwyl is due to hand over the building on December 15 and after a fortnight shutdown to transfer the business, lock, stock and barrel. The intake pipe out in the Menai Straits will start pumping the sea water to the new salt cote – with the visitor facilities opening before Easter 2015.

Anwyl Construction Director Tom Anwyl said: “We’re very excited about the project and about playing a part in the continued success of this world famous product.

“It’s an interesting build because the steel-frame will have to be of very high quality steel and great care also has to be taken with all the building materials because salt has such corrosive properties.”

As well as a production facility the new building will also incorporate a visitor tour as a new venture, with the entire project overseen by local company Advent Project Management Ltd. The new facilities will guarantee they can maintain current production levels of half a million packs of sea salt a year with the capacity to increase that significantly.